Written by Siti Lailatul Hajar (Bintang Sahara) on Rabu, 18 April 2012 at 09.35

Annabel and Midge
came out of the tea room with the arrogant slow gait of the leisured, for their
Saturday afternoon stretched ahead of them. They had lunched, as was their
wont, on sugar, starches, oils, and butter-fats. Usually they ate sandwiches of
spongy new white bread greased with butter and mayonnaise; they ate thick
wedges of cake lying wet beneath ice cream and whipped cream and melted
chocolate gritty with nuts. As alternates, they ate patties, sweating beads of
inferior oil, containing bits of bland meat bogged in pale, stiffening sauce;
they ate pastries, limber under rigid icing, filled with an indeterminate
yellow sweet stuff, not still solid, not yet liquid, like salve that has been
left in the sun. They chose no other sort of food, nor did they consider it.
And their skin was like the petals of wood anemones, and their bellies were as
flat and their flanks as lean as those of young Indian braves.

Annabel and Midge had
been best friends almost from the day that Midge had found a job as
stenographer with the firm that employed Annabel. By now, Annabel, two years
longer in the stenographic department, had worked up to the wages of eighteen
dollars and fifty cents a week; Midge was still at sixteen dollars. Each girl
lived at home with her family and paid half her salary to its support.

The girls sat side by
side at their desks, they lunched together every noon; together they set out
for home at the end of the day’s work. Many of their evenings and most of their
Sundays were passed in each other’s company. Often they were joined by two
young men, but there was no steadiness to any such quartet; the two young men would
give place, unlamented, to two other young men, and lament would have been
inappropriate, really, since the newcomers were scarcely distinguishable from
their predecessors. Invariably the girls spent the fine idle hours of their
hot-weather Saturday afternoons together. Constant use had not worn ragged the
fabric of their friendship.

They looked alike,
though the resemblance did not lie in their features. It was in the shape of
their bodies, their movements, their style, and their adornments. Annabel and
Midge did, and completely, all that young office workers are besought not to
do. They painted their lips and their nails, they darkened their lashes and
lightened their hair, and scent seemed to shimmer from them. They wore thin,
bright dresses, tight over their breasts and high on their legs, and tilted
slippers, fancifully strapped. They looked conspicuous and cheap and charming.

Now, as they walked
across to Fifth Avenue with their skirts swirled by the hot wind, they received
audible admiration. Young men grouped lethargically about newsstands awarded
them murmurs, exclamations, even—the ultimate tribute—whistles. Annabel and
Midge passed without the condescension of hurrying their pace; they held their
heads higher and set their feet with exquisite precision, as if they stepped
over the necks of peasants.

Always the girls went
to walk on Fifth Avenue on their free afternoons, for it was the ideal ground
for their favorite game. The game could be played anywhere, and indeed, was,
but the great shop windows stimulated the two players to their best form.

Annabel had invented
the game; or rather she had evolved it from an old one. Basically, it was no
more than the ancient sport of what-would-you-do-if-you-had-a-million-dollars?
But Annabel had drawn a new set of rules for it, had narrowed it, pointed it,
made it stricter. Like all games, it was the more absorbing for being more
difficult.

Annabel’s version
went like this: You must suppose that somebody dies and leaves you a million
dollars, cool. But there is a condition to the bequest. It is stated in the
will that you must spend every nickel of the money on yourself.

There lay the hazard
of the game. If, when playing it, you forgot and listed among your expenditures
the rental of a new apartment for your family, for example, you lost your turn
to the other player. It was astonishing how many—and some of them among the
experts, too—would forfeit all their innings by such slips.

It was essential, of
course, that it be played in passionate seriousness. Each purchase must be
carefully considered and, if necessary, supported by argument. There was no
zest to playing it wildly. Once Annabel had introduced the game to Sylvia,
another girl who worked in the office. She explained the rules to Sylvia and
then offered her the gambit. “What would be the first thing you’d do?” Sylvia
had not shown the decency of even a second of hesitation. “Well,” she said,
“the first thing I’d do, I’d go out and hire somebody to shoot Mrs. Gary
Cooper, and then . . .” So it is to be seen that she was no fun.

But Annabel and Midge
were surely born to be comrades, for Midge played the game like a master from
the moment she learned it. It was she who added the touches that made the whole
thing cozier. According to Midge’s innovations, the eccentric who died and left
you the money was not anybody you loved, or, for the matter of that, anybody
you even knew. It was somebody who had seen you somewhere and had thought,
“That girl ought to have lots of nice things. I’m going to leave her a million
dollars when I die.” And the death was to be neither untimely nor painful. Your
benefactor, full of years and comfortably ready to depart, was to slip softly
away during sleep and go right to heaven. These embroideries permitted Annabel
and Midge to play their game in the luxury of peaceful consciences.

Midge played with a
seriousness that was not only proper but extreme. The single strain on the
girls’ friendship had followed an announcement once made by Annabel that the
first thing she would buy with her million dollars would be a silver-fox coat.
It was as if she had struck Midge across the mouth. When Midge recovered her
breath, she cried that she couldn’t imagine how Annabel could do such a
thing—silver-fox coats were so common! Annabel defended her taste with the
retort that they were not common, either. Midge then said that they were so.
She added that everybody had a silver-fox coat. She went on, with perhaps a
slight toss of head, to declare that she herself wouldn’t be caught dead in
silver fox.

For the next few
days, though the girls saw each other as constantly, their conversation was
careful and infrequent, and they did not once play their game. Then one
morning, as soon as Annabel entered the office, she came to Midge and said she
had changed her mind. She would not buy a silver-fox coat with any part of her
million dollars. Immediately on receiving the legacy, she would select a coat
of mink.

Midge smiled and her
eyes shone. “I think,” she said, “you’re doing absolutely the right thing.”

Now, as they walked
along Fifth Avenue, they played the game anew. It was one of those days with
which September is repeatedly cursed; hot and glaring, with slivers of dust in
the wind. People drooped and shambled, but the girls carried themselves tall
and walked a straight line, as befitted young heiresses on their afternoon
promenade. There was no longer need for them to start the game at its formal
opening. Annabel went direct to the heart of it.

“All right,” she
said. “So you’ve got this million dollars. So what would be the first thing
you’d do?”

“Well, the first
thing I’d do,” Midge said, “I’d get a mink coat.” But she said it mechanically,
as if she were giving the memorized answer to an expected question.

“Yes,” Annabel said.
“I think you ought to. The terribly dark kind of mink.” But she, too, spoke as
if by rote. It was too hot; fur, no matter how dark and sleek and supple, was
horrid to the thoughts.

They stepped along in
silence for a while. Then Midge’s eye was caught by a shop window. Cool, lovely
gleamings were there set off by chaste and elegant darkness.

“No,” Midge said, “I
take it back. I wouldn’t get a mink coat the first thing. Know what I’d do? I’d
get a string of pearls. Real pearls.”

Annabel’s eyes turned
to follow Midge’s.

“Yes,” she said,
slowly. “I think that’s a kind of a good idea. And it would make sense, too.
Because you can wear pearls with anything.” Together they went over to the shop
window and stood pressed against it. It contained but one object-a double row
of great, even pearls clasped by a deep emerald around a little pink velvet
throat.

“What do you suppose
they cost?” Annabel said.

“Gee, I don’t know,”
Midge said. “Plenty, I guess.”

“Like a thousand
dollars?” Annabel said.

“Oh, I guess like
more,” Midge said. “On account of the emerald.”

“Well, like ten
thousand dollars?” Annabel said.

“Gee, I wouldn’t even
know,” Midge said.

The devil nudged
Annabel in the ribs. “Dare you to go in and price them,” she said.

“Like fun!” Midge
said.

“Dare you,” Annabel
said.

“Why, a store like
this wouldn’t even be open this afternoon,” Midge said.

“Yes, it is so, too,”
Annabel said. “People just came out. And there’s a doorman on. Dare you.”

“Well,” Midge said.
“But you’ve got to come too.”

They tendered thanks,
icily, to the doorman for ushering them into the shop. It was cool and quiet, a
broad, gracious room with paneled walls and soft carpet. But the girls wore
expressions of bitter disdain, as if they stood in a sty.

A slim, immaculate
clerk came to them and bowed. His neat face showed no astonishment at their
appearance.

“Good afternoon,” he
said. He implied that he would never forget it if they would grant him the
favor of accepting his soft-spoken greeting.

“Good afternoon,”
Annabel and Midge said together, and in like freezing accents.

“Is there
something—?” the clerk said.

“Oh, we’re just
looking,” Annabel said. It was as if she flung the words down from a dais.

The clerk bowed.

“My friend and myself
merely happened to be passing,” Midge said, and stopped, seeming to listen to
the phrase. “My friend here and myself,” she went on, “merely happened to be
wondering how much are those pearls you’ve got in your window.”

The clerk bowed. “An
exceptionally beautiful necklace,” he said. “Would you care to look at it?”

“No, thank you,”
Annabel said.

“My friend and myself
merely happened to be passing,” Midge said.

They turned to go; to
go, from their manner, where the tumbrel awaited them. The clerk sprang ahead
and opened the door. He bowed as they swept by him.

The girls went on
along the Avenue and disdain was still on their faces.

“Honestly!” Annabel
said. “Can you imagine a thing like that?”

“Two hundred and
fifty thousand dollars!” Midge said. “That’s a quarter of a million dollars
right there!”

“He’s got his nerve!”
Annabel said.

They walked on.
Slowly the disdain went, slowly and completely as if drained from them, and
with it went the regal carriage and tread. Their shoulders dropped and they
dragged their feet; they bumped against each other, without notice or apology,
and caromed away again. They were silent and their eyes were cloudy.

Suddenly Midge
straightened her back, flung her head high, and spoke, clear and strong.

“Listen, Annabel,”
she said. “Look. Suppose there was this terribly rich person, see? You don’t
know this person, but this person has seen you somewhere and wants to do
something for you. Well, it’s a terribly old person, see? And so this person
dies, just like going to sleep, and leaves you ten million dollars. Now, what
would be the first thing you’d do?